1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to print environments and more specifically relates to printing and scanning with cloud storage.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Print spooling as known in the art has enabled multiple client computers to share a printer by allowing print jobs generated from the client computers to be first stored at a spooling server, and then to be printed on the printer in an orderly fashion from the spooling server. Each of the print jobs is typically deleted by the spooling server automatically after the print job is printed on the printer. However, users have demanded to gain greater control over their print jobs. For example, a user may wish to reprint a print job any number of times at any time. Another user may wish to maintain a history of print jobs for future reference. Yet another user may wish to allow others to print the user's print job.
However, maintaining the print jobs would put enormous strain on the existing information technology infrastructure. Because the print jobs may be stored indefinitely, additional storage capacities need to be added. Adding the additional storage capacities represents not only additional up-front capital expenditures in additional equipment, but also additional personnel resources to set up and maintain the additional equipment. Planning for adding the additional storage capacities is also problematic with the risk of either over investment resulting in excess capacity or under investment resulting in insufficient capacity.
Meanwhile, a multi-function peripheral (“MFP”) that includes printing capabilities may need to be updated to allow the users to gain greater control over their print jobs at the MFP. However, capabilities of an MFP are typically embedded within the MFP during manufacturing, and adding new capabilities would result in costly field upgrades. Likewise, each of the client computers used by the users may also need to be updated so that print jobs generated by the client computers can be stored in a manner different from print spooling.
Thus there is a general need in the art to provide users with greater control over their print jobs.